Video Viper

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Comedy 'Cedar Rapids' enjoyable surprise

Tim
Lippe is a nerdy, sheltered individual whose life changes when he
goes to an insurance convention in the big city of Cedar Rapids in
the unexpectedly good comedy “Cedar Rapids.”

The
insurance chain emphasizes God, family and doing right by the
customer. Yes, the agents could sell more insurance than to
unsuspecting customers, but they strive to be honest.

Ed
Helmes plays Lippe, who goes to the conference in order to retain the
top insurance award for their little agency in Brown Valley, Wis. A
fellow agent usually attended the conference, but he died
accidentally while trying to choke himself during a sexual act.

Tim
is naive. He sleeps regularly with his old seventh-grade teacher,
played by Sigourney Weaver.

As
a youngster, he was the guy expected to go places in the world, but
instead he works to help others achieve their dreams.

His
life changes in a big way when he lands in Cedar Rapids.

A
prostitute asks for a cigarette as a come-on to determine if he might
be a customer. But Tim is oblivious to her occupation, tells her
smoking is bad and offers her some butterscotch candy.

He
shares a suite at the convention with conventional agent Ronald
Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and party-hardy Dean Ziegler, played by
John C. Reilly.

Add
into the mix Anne Heche, who plays Joan Ostrowski-Fox, who is married
with children but uses the convention to find a sex partner for the
weekend.

Kurtwood
Smith plays the paternal president of the company. Before they eat,
he leads them in prayer. He gives fatherly advice.

Tim
must do a one-on-one presentation to Smith’s character in order to
retain the big award and thus insure the viability of the franchise.

The
film has some of the raunchiness of “The Hangover” and its ilk,
but is slightly more conventional.

That
doesn’t mean the film isn’t worth the effort. I found it on HBO’s
on demand channel and was surprised how much I liked the film.

Everybody
is out to achieve their own goals, but they appear to be there to
help their fellow agents as well.

Of
course, not everything is as it seems.

There
is a humanity to the Ziegler character you didn’t expect and the
plot has enough unexpected twists and turns to keep you entertained.

The
characters also are multi-dimensional. You can see their different
sides and they offer some surprises, even the prostitute.

I
was not expecting a whole lot from the film but was pleasantly
surprised.

The
nerdy Helms’ character really helped to give the film an extra
depth of humanity that made it unique and enjoyable.

But
keep in mind this isn’t the Waltons of insurance agents. There’s
plenty in the film to give it the R rating.

Character 'Arthur' annoying no matter who plays part

Barry Wetcher / Warner Bros.

You’ve
got a multi-millionaire man-child whom we are supposed to find
lovable.

Dudley
Moore originally played the habitually drunkened Arthur back in 1981.
The movie was OK, but grew annoying as the film progressed.

The
same with the 2011 remake starring Russell Brand, up to a point.
Sorry Moore fans, but Brand was slightly more fun.

It
starts with Brand going out on the town with his chauffeur,
Bitterman, played by Luis Guzman. Except they portray Batman and
Robin. OK, cheap humor, but Guzman is pretty hilarious as an
overweight, Hispanic Robin.

Soon
they crash their Batmobile and are arrested by the police. But it’s
no big deal. The cops know Arthur and arresting him is a regular
event. The press also loves to report on Arthur’s exploits, he
being the heir to a big corporation.

After
being released from prison, he starts tossing money around at a bar,
his way of improving the economy.

Yes,
he’s lovable and incompetent. Don’t you just love his free
spirit?

His
mother, played by Geraldine James, doesn’t. So she gives him one of
those situation-comedy ultimatums, marry the daughter of another
wealthy family or be cut off from his income source.

His
fiancee, Susan Johnson, is played by Jennifer Garner, and future
dad-in-law is none other than raspy Nick Nolte, playing a self-made
millionaire who garnered his millions in construction.

The
Nolte scenes are pretty disposable. It seems like they could have
been reworked to spotlight his talent. And for the most point, you
see him a bit and he’s gone. Not an intricate part of the film,
except, maybe, when he’s holding Arthur’s head to a buzzsaw.

This
being the film with the predictable plot, enter now a young woman
with some of Arthur’s zany practices, but make her poor. Then let
them fall in love. Ahhhhh.

So
Arthur must marry the snooty rich girl or lose his fortune. The girl
he loves is played by Greta Gerwig as a young woman who earns her
living giving unauthorized tours of New York. Apparently, this is an
illegal action, as she is stopped by police. So heck, she’s a bit
of a rebel, too. Offering unsanctioned tours of the Big Apple.

So
not a real original plot. You got the rich guy who will lose his
fortune if he doesn’t marry the stuck up rich girl. But he’s in
love with the off-the-wall poor girl. There’s even a scene almost
out of “I Love Lucy” in which both women are in his cavernous
apartment and he must keep them from running into each other.

Helen
Mirren plays his faithful, sarcastic servant, Hobson. Sir John
Gielgud played the role in the original picture.

This
pedestrian film is really saved by Brand’s over-the--top acting.
He’s a hilarious guy, the same as when he plays the has-been rock
star on Showtime’s “Californication.”

There’s
some pretty funny scenes with his Arthur character in an AA meeting.

In
less capable hands, “Arthur” would be a real mess. But Brand
makes the movie rather palatable. He at least provides enough laughs
to make the film worth your time.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Movie tells you much about movies

I did the first time I saw it years ago and now, thanks to a Turner Classic Movies' recent tribute to director Francois Truffaut, I got to see it all over again.

The title describes a technique of shooting a scene during the daytime and through darkroom manipulations make the film look like it happened at night.

You see, “Day For Night” is a movie about the making of a fictitious movie and the pitfalls and joys. It is not all glamour and stardom.

The film is interesting because it not only shows filming techniques, but shows how the movie cast and crew quickly become family for the short time they are together, then go their separate ways.

In one scene, a woman is supposed to be living in an apartment across from her in-laws, except there is no building. So the crew built a tree-fort like structure with a bay window. Shooting at the correct angle looks it appears to be an apartment.

Often when two people in a moving car are filmed, it's with a blue screen. The background, like city streets or back roads, is added later. But it looks fake. In “Day For Night,” the car is towed by a truck with the film crew in front and one actor fakes driving. More realistic and pretty sweet.

Of course, “Day For Night” was filmed in 1973 and technology has changed filmmaking a great deal.

The movie within “Day For Night” is called “Meet Pamela,” the story of a woman and her new husband who meet her new in laws and she falls in love with her father-in-law. The movie ends tragically in more than one way.

The delicious Jacqueline Bisset plays the actress who is Pamela, while her husband is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud. The father-in-law is played by Jean-Pierre Aumont.

While the plot of the in-movie is rather pedestrian, the story of the those involved in making the movie is much more interesting.

The Bisset character is married to a doctor who helped her out of her depression. Her movie husband is a needy, whiney sort who is in love with the girl who uses the clapboard to announce the next scene. He always wants her within his sight, so naturally when an Englishman flies in to do a particularly dangerous car-crash stunt, the girl runs off with him.

So the movie husband can't go on. He's going to walk out of the picture. The Bisset character shows a little too much sympathy for him and ends up spending the night. He then repays her kindness by calling the doctor husband and tells him he just slept with hubby's wife.

Truffaut plays the director and the production goes on while coming apart at the seams.

There are many fine backstories that make this comedy-drama a lot of fun.

It's probably Traffaut's best work. See it in the day or night. It's worth it.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

A magical film about Paris

Sony Pictures Classics

Maybe
because I recently visited Paris, I was quickly drawn to Woody
Allen’s romantic comedy “Midnight in Paris.

” First off, Owen
Wilson can be an annoying actor. Heck, he gets annoying in this
film.

But with the backdrop of Paris, and the plot and the
dialogue, I soon forgot any annoyances.

Even though many characters in the “modern Paris” part are
annoying. They are snooty, one upping each other.

Wilson
and his girlfriend, played by Rachel McAdams, are staying in Paris.
He operates a nostalgia shop back in the states, selling old radios
and the like. (Only in movies can you operate a little shop and make
enough money for an extended trip to Paris.)

McAdams plays Inez, a
rich girl whose parents show up in Paris. Mimi Kennedy plays her
snooty mom who likes only expensive jewelry and Kurt Fuller is the
dad. He doesn’t like his future son-in-law and hires a detective to
follow him during his long nightly walks.

The couple also run into
her old friend, played by Nina Arlanda, and her boyfriend, played by
Michael Sheen.

Sheen’s character is especially annoying, because
he knows everything about everything, from history to art to wine. He
argues with French tour guides.

So it is a welcome respite when
Wilson’s character decides to ditch the gang and walk back to the
hotel. Where he ends up getting lost. But a 1920s-era taxi pulls up
and offers Wilson’s character a ride. And that’s when the magic
begins.

He ends up at a hotel where he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald
and Zelda, played by Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston, as well as
Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Steid, Salvador Dali, T.S. Elliot and a
host of intellectuals and artists. Yep, his taxi takes him back in
time to the era and the place he most covets, Paris in the 1920s.

And
there the usually goofy Wilson gets to hobnob with the elites, the
people who are his heroes, living in their era, young and witty and
drunk.

Pill as Zelda is especially fun and entertaining.

Every
day, Wilson returns to his life of modern antagonists, knowing at
night he will catch that taxi and go back to a more magical time and
place, with people he has become friends with, who know and respect
him and don’t downgrade him for his opinions.

Time travel movies
are difficult to do and often come out worse for the wear. But
Allen’s talents shine through. And even though he doesn’t appear
in the film, it has his trademark characters and dialog.

I was
especially impressed with Carey Stoll as Hemingway, who stresses
novels about strength and honor and being valiant and not fearing
death.

There are some scenes that could have been omitted. The
Wilson character tries to steal his girlfriend’s pearl earrings to
give to his 20s friend, Adriena, and that ends disastrously. That
should have been cut. It is totally out of character and doesn’t
progress the plot.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Even Clint couldn't save this one

Warner Bros.Leonardo DiCaprio and Naomi Watts in "J. Edgar."

It had all of the elements of being a winner.It had a good cast with people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Judi Dench.It was a biographical film about one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century. Plus, it was directed by Clint Eastwood.Why “J. Edgar” proved so disappointing, I’m not certain. Perhaps Eastwood was nearing that chair-talking stage of his life.Leonardo DiCaprio played FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the only man to hold the position from the bureau’s inception until Hoover’s death in 1972.The film flashed back and forth from Hoover’s later days and various high points in his life.He started in the Department of Justice in 1919, concerned about the infiltration of communists and Bolsheviks. Hoover took on more responsibilities than his title and training gave him.He had a core of agents and was bent on creating a database of bad guys’ fingerprints. Hoover wanted everyone fingerprinted, to better find the perpetrator should a major crime take place.Other agents were concerned they were investigating people who weren’t really suspected of a crime. Hoover was undeterred. He wanted to catch the bad guys before they committed a crime and personal rights weren’t a big deal to him.He eventually squeezed his way into becoming the FBI director, working hard to gain power. Originally, agents had no arrest powers.Throughout the years, we witness Hoover waiting in the outer office to meet the new president. Hoover always stopped to look at a painting of George Washington.In each instance, the president had plans to bring Hoover down a peg or two, until Hoover quietly disclosed some information he had about the new chief executive or other family members. For instance, Hoover had info about Eleanor Roosevelt’s affair with another woman.Hoover saw himself as a bigger man than others did. He encouraged comic books and graphic novels in which he arrested the bad guy with a machine gun. In reality, Hoover had nothing to do with arrests until it was publicly brought to his attention. Then he joined in on arrests only when it was safe.Naomi Watts played his faithful secretary who immediately began shredding documents at his death.She first met him when she started working for the Department of Justice back in 1919. After one date, Hoover was ready to propose, but she ended up as his secretary for decades instead.Armie Hammer played the agent who ended up living with Hoover and certainly became his lover.But the film has no life to it. The Hoover story just plods along through the Lindbergh baby kidnapping to John Dillinger’s killing. The story, the acting, needed to be turned up a notch or two.We feel sorry for the little man who had a mother fixation his whole life. (She was played by Judi Dench.)I would have liked to see more about what happened when John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King were assassinated.We see this historic figure brought down to something resembling a vanilla milkshake.The movie needed more cream.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Mikael Persbrandt plays Anton, a man
who lives in two different worlds with two very different sets of
challenges in the film “In A Better World.”

Anton is drifting apart from his wife
while straining to work as a doctor in a dangerous and crude African
refugee camp while trying to keep his life going in a Denmark town.

He and wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm)
are looking at a separation. Meanwhile, his son, Elias, 10, is being
bullied in school. Every day, his bicycle tires are flattened and the
stems are taken out so he can’t simply inflate them.

Then there’s the new boy in town,
Christian, played by William Nielsen, who moved from London with his
recently widowed father, Claus, played by Ulrich Thomsen.

Christian has his share of problems,
most manifested by the death of his mother and his hatred for his
father, whom Christian perceives as to be relieved by her death.

When a bully turns his anger from Elias
to Christian, Christian retaliates by clubbing the bully and
threatening him with a knife.

In this movie at least, bullying seems
to be tolerated in Denmark. When Elias’ parents are initially
called in to discuss the bullying, a school administrator seems to
indicate his parents’ marital problems are a part of the problem.

Even after Christian violently beats
the bully, the ramifications don’t appear serious.

Anton, meanwhile, is juggling a lot of
issues. One day he must stand up to a tribal leader who demands
treatment and laughs when a woman dies.

He must operate under crude conditions,
under dusty tents with marauding gangs in Jeeps shooting off guns.

He comes home to a cold wife and a
confused son.

At one point, Anton separates his son
and another boy who are fighting. He finds himself the target of a
bully himself. We know Anton isn’t a coward. He stood up to a
fierce tribal leader.

But in the case of the local bully, he
takes his lumps and leaves. But Elias is horrified.

Christian, with so many anger issues,
decides he’s going to get revenge by building a pipebomb and
placing it under the bully’s vehicle. If it’s exploded early in
the morning, it won’t hurt anyone, Christian decides.

But the horrific blast does have its
consequences.

This film seemingly dumps us into a
group of interesting people and their compelling lives. We hang for
awhile and the movie ends. There are no certain conclusions. There’s
no happy endings.

Their lives go on and so do ours.

The characters are interesting and
compelling. There are many side stories to keep us interested.